Micromachined accelerometers can be used to sense acceleration for a variety of applications, including sensing the acceleration that occurs as a result of an automobile accident in order to trigger an air bag, or sensing the acceleration resulting from an earthquake in order to automatically shut off a gas line to prevent fires.
Such an accelerometer is often mechanically shaken to obtain various performance parameters. For example, obtaining accelerometer sensitivity at a specific frequency may include shaking the accelerometer at that specific frequency and at a known gee level. However, it is difficult to accurately shake the accelerometer at high frequencies (e.g., 13 kHz). This makes obtaining precise measurements of accelerometer sensitivity at high frequencies problematic.